Man Sentenced To Eight Years In Prison For Post Office Scheme

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Chief U.S. District Judge Frank D. Whitney sentenced today Jimmy Lee Williams, 48, of Charlotte to 105 months in prison for orchestrating a fraudulent check scheme that netted the conspiracy more than $650,000 in postage stamps and other merchandise, announced Jill Westmoreland Rose, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.  Judge Whitney also ordered Williams to serve two years under court supervision following the prison term and to pay $646,993.61 to the United States Postal Service as restitution.

Thomas L. Noyes, Inspector in Charge of the Charlotte Division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; John A. Strong, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Charlotte Division;  and Janie Sutton, Acting Director of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation join U.S. Attorney Rose in making todays’ announcement.

According to court documents and statements made in court, in two separate time periods between November 2010 to present, Williams used a network of 16 accomplices to defraud U.S. Post Offices and other businesses in North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Court records show that Williams and/or his accomplices used counterfeit or fraudulent checks and fraudulent identification to purchase postage stamps, gift cards and other merchandise with a total face value of more than $650,000. 

To execute the fraudulent scheme, Williams used counterfeit checks and checks drawn on his own closed accounts and the bank accounts of accomplices he met in prison and through youth football leagues in the Concord, North Carolina area.  According to court records, Williams’ accomplices gave the stamps they obtained to Williams, who then sold them to an Internet company in California as well as a North Carolina pawn shop, typically for 50%-70% of the face value.  Williams recruited his accomplices from prison and wrote instructions on how to commit the charged postal fraud while serving a prison sentence for violating conditions of his supervised release from a previous federal conviction. 

Williams pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and one count of money laundering. He is currently in federal custody and will be transferred to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons upon designation of a federal facility. All federal sentences are served without the possibility of parole.

USPIS, the FBI, and NC SBI investigated the case.Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Savage, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte, prosecuted the case.